It's not clear what you objected to, the misattribution, which I regret, or the content. The content is pretty solid.

Sorry, it's a day where I'm running on 2 hours of sleep, so I get sloppy. In any case, some days the distinction between what Snowden revealed and what Glen Greenwald said is a bit thin. Here are links to a Greenwald articles and interview and a quote from the interview -

"GLENN GREENWALD: Yeah. Well, first of all, all this report said is that the Snowden reporting began in June of 2013, and then in September and December, al-Qaeda had different encryption programs. But the most basic logical premise teaches us that just because event A preceded event B doesn’t mean that event A caused event B. That isn’t evidence of causation. The reality is, is that you can go back to 2001 and find all kind of news stories every year describing the efforts of al-Qaeda to develop sophisticated and advanced forms of encryption. They’ve known forever that the U.S. government wants to electronically surveil their communications. They’ve been developing encryption for many, many years before the Snowden stories ever began. And in August of 2013, the U.S. government, the Obama administration went to the media, to McClatchy and to The Daily Beast, and they bragged about how they had intercepted a conference call between al-Qaeda leaders, in which al-Qaeda leaders were planning to attack U.S. embassies. And according to The New York Times, that leak, that came from the government..."

Bottom line, Al Queda wrote their own encryption software, updated it often, and it is reasonable to assume neither they, nor any other bad guy with half a brain, would use a US government approved encryption package.

"There is no history of social norms being that leaving keys in the car constitutes permission for anyone to use that car."

It's not widespread, but... about 10 years ago my wife got a job in a small college in the mountains of Colorado. The staff left the keys in their cars. When my wife asked about this, she was told, "what if a student or staff member without a car has to make a quick trip downtown? They can't drive our cars without the keys!"

My wife's mind was blown, but there was no history of car theft at the college. A few years later, the police encouraged them to stop doing that.

What is someone saying when they leave their wifi unsecured? Here are a few possibilities off the top of my head.

Are they saying, "Come all ye yearning to wifi free"?

Are they saying, "It's unlocked because I couldn't figure out how to secure the damn thing"?

Are they saying, "We're doing some dodgy stuff here and we want plausible denyability later, yeah, it was a jerk in the next apartment hijacking my wifi, not me, that downloaded the movies. Really!"

Is the question comparable to an unlocked door on a house? And where would the law fall if someone walked into a house and claimed it wasn't breaking and entering because the door wasn't locked? Not being a lawyer, I'm really asking

This is almost certainly off-topic, and for that I apologize. If someone can refer me to a good resource in lieu of answering my question, I'd appreciate that.

Here's my quandry - the sites I run do not collect information on site visitors, and all financial transactions are passed off to PayPal. PayPal handles record keeping as well. No credit card numbers on my site, no personal info.

The question is, would it help my site visitors if I started running SSL, HSTS & PFS and all the other stuff the reset the net folks suggest? I'm willing to dive down the rabbit hole, just not all that damn eager.

All the sources I've seen say that in my position, there's no real need. Thoughts?

I recently switched from Sprint to T-Mobile and I've been very happy with the change. I'm saving over $100 a month for a family of three.

On the data front, here's what T-Mobile does. You have unlimited bandwidth. After you reach a limit, they throttle you down to lower speeds. If you need more than 500mb per month of high speed data (the default) you can get an additional 2gb for $10 a month. When you get the additional bandwidth, they enable tethering at no additional charge.

I paid over $500 to be shut of Sprint. It's the best $500 I have ever spent!

It all depends on where you are. T-Mobile's CEO says they cover the vast majority of Americans, though not the vast majority of the geography. He says they're working on covering the geography. We'll see.

However, in the Dallas area, T-Mobile was a vast improvement over Sprint. Better coverage, better bandwidth.

On a recent trip from Dallas to Austin, T-Mobile was no worse in the boonies than Sprint. (Damning with faint praise.)

I paid over $500 to be shut of Sprint and move to T-Mobile. It will pay for itself in 5 months. And, for me where I am, the service is much better.

California did the same thing to the San Francisco Baking Institute, a world famous baking school. It was touch and go if they'd be able to stay open. I thought it was outrageous. Mostly because of the sudden and heavy-handed way the state handled it. "You're shut down. Now." was pretty much the way it went down. They had to jump through hoops and make the rivers run backwards to stay open.

On the other hand, they, and the coding academies mentioned, are charging for their services. I don't have a problem with the state of California trying to make sure that the schools are legit. In many cases, the students are paying with funds the state provided, so the question of "is the state getting their money's worth?" is a valid question.